Common Decency
by Wordsplat
Summary: Steve sees his first bikini, and is suitably confused. Oneshot, pre-slash, TonyxSteve


Steve was not a prude.

He _wasn't, _no matter what Tony said. Tony said plenty of things, plenty of them ridiculous and absurd and nowhere near true—he'd told that Darcy girl Steve's...equipment tasted like apple pie, for heaven's sake—and this was one of them. Steve had been in the _army. _He'd stripped down in front of other people plenty of times: in the barracks, in the field, in the SHIELD locker room.

Yes, alright, he was _technically speaking _a virgin, but virgin didn't correlate to prude. God, he grew up with Bucky Barnes, he couldn't have been a prude if he'd tried to be. Bucky's jokes tended to be crass, violent, or both, and Steve was more than practiced in the art of innuendo. Hell, he'd heard Howard say some word he hadn't known and his mind had gone straight to the gutter; he blamed Bucky for that, of course, but it didn't change the facts.

Virgin or not, he'd seen people naked, too. The Howling Commandos had run low on plenty of things, but skin mags had never been one of them, and yeah, he'd looked. He was young and at war and of course the material had piqued his interest. He'd always been a visual man—channeled into art, usually, but it certainly applied elsewhere—and Steve knew he wasn't the best at keeping his eyes from wandering. He was human. There had been times he'd stared a beat too long at a stripping soldier or a changing USO girl, or more recently, the times he'd snuck a peek at the steam-hazy form he always happened to take the shower stall directly next to after missions.

Okay, he might've snuck more than a peek.

Which wasn't _good, _of course, and he really ought to stop, but it made the point that he was certainly not a prude. There was nothing prudish about the way a certain someone's water-slick olive skin made his mouth go dry, or the fact that Steve could easily map every dip and curve of their back muscles, too often concealed by suits and deliciously visible through grease-stained undershirts. Nothing prudish at all about his vivid memory of them under shower spray, smooth and bare and dipping down towards—towards things he shouldn't think about. Prudes probably didn't imagine how calloused hands would feel roaming over their skin, didn't have dreams that made their heart beat double and their throat clench and their stomach curl tight with want.

So. Steve was clearly not a prude.

If anything, he seemed to have the opposite problem, but that wasn't really anything he felt like sharing. The point was, Steve was more than acquainted with the human form. He'd seen it, drawn it, been attracted to it, everything. He was comfortable with nudity, so long as it made sense under the circumstances.

The three little pieces of fabric plastered to Natasha's skin did not make sense.

They apparently didn't conform to the laws of gravity, either. It was just _string, _string and three very small triangles and Steve couldn't understand how it possibly stayed aloft, but averted his eyes instead of examining it further. Not because he was a prude, but because even if his teammate was walking around in her underwear, he was fairly certain he wasn't supposed to look.

"Oh my god, look at his _face," _Tony announced delightedly, and Steve flushed harder. Damn it.

"Don't start—" He tried in his sternest voice. As always, it had absolutely no effect on Tony.

"You'd think he'd never seen a—" Tony froze, looking like he'd swallowed his tongue with glee. "Holy shit, Captain Purity Ring's never seen a bikini!"

"A what?" Steve asked before he could think better of it.

"It's just a swimsuit, Cap." Bruce took pity on him, answering before Tony could spin some outrageous lie and embarrass Steve further.

Bruce was in one of the lounge chairs by the pool. He had swim trunks and a shirt on though he was still reading, only changing clothes because Tony wheedled him into it over the course of an hour. Steve had caved much faster—he'd lasted right up until Tony had stripped away his shirt, at which point all bets had been off—and had only just come back from changing himself. Apparently Natasha had done the same.

"_That's _a—?" Steve quickly snapped his mouth shut. If Natasha had seen fit to put it on, he probably shouldn't insult it. "Right. Of course it is."

"Look at that muscle in his jaw jump." Tony grinned. "He's gonna have a hernia trying to bottle up his 'good old days' rage. Tell me, Cap, what _did _they wear back then? Wetsuits? Burkas? Even you can appreciate the upgrade."

"You look lovely, Natasha." Steve forced out, though he couldn't quite bring himself to actually _look._

"Thank you, Steve." The corner of her mouth quirked up in amusement. Steve chose to focus on that.

"See? Even Spangles can appreciate the view." Tony made eyes at Natasha, and Steve got the sense it wasn't the first time today, or even in the past ten minutes. She rolled her own in response.

"You're speaking, but all I hear is 'punch me in the face'," Natasha commented mildly.

"I always hear 'punch me in the face' when Stark's talking, but it's usually subtext," Clint agreed, coming down the steps to the pool, the next to emerge in a bathing suit.

Tony tried to shove Clint into the pool in retaliation for the comment, but Clint was faster. Instead, the SHIELD agent slipped his ankle around Tony's, grabbed him by the arm, and flipped him over his shoulder and into the pool. There was a loud splash as Tony hit the water, and the team laughed. He surfaced with a sputter, spitting water everywhere and swearing a blue streak.

"I shall go next!" Thor boomed, the last to the pool, and he took a flying leap off the steps, right towards—

"Oh _fuck!" _Tony's eyes went wide.

Thor belly-flopped, emptying nearly half the pool in the process. Steve quickly went over to the edge, trying to catch sight of Tony. If Thor had actually landed on him, Tony would be a world of pain right now. How could Thor have been so reckle—

Steve only caught a brief flicker of brown eyes before a hand shot out of the water, closed around his wrist, and yanked him in.

Steve crashed into Tony underwater, their chests and shoulders bumping, lighting sparks under his skin where they touched. There was a split second where Steve lingered, where he purposefully stayed tangled with Tony just to feel those sparks a moment longer, then he swum back enough to let Tony squirm out from under him. Tony kicked his legs and propelled himself upward, breaking the surface only a second or so before Steve. Steve spat out the water he'd almost swallowed and shot a half-hearted glare at Tony, who just grinned.

"Man, you're an easy mark," Tony told him cheekily.

"And _you're_ a cheater," Steve responded, though there was a reluctant smile curling his lips.

"What great fun, Anthony!" Thor swam up between them, clapping a hand on each of their shoulders. "Very good idea. Quite a way to 'beat the heat', as you said!"

"You betcha," Tony agreed, "If you can get the others in the pool, I'll even show you Marco Polo."

"I do not understand." Thor frowned. "I know no one by that name."

"It's a game," Steve clarified.

"You know what Marco Polo is?" Tony leaned in front of Thor to raise an eyebrow at him.

"Believe it or not, Tony, you didn't invent water." Steve rolled his eyes.

"My apologies, Captain Sassy." Tony scooped up some water and cupped his hands, squirting it in Steve's face. Steve wiped the water out of his eyes and scooped some up himself, squirting Tony back.

"How does one do that?" Thor tried to gather the water, squirt it like they were doing, but it just slipped through the cracks of his fingers.

"Steve, you go round up the troops. Thor, watch me," Tony instructed, showing Thor how to hold his hands.

"Sir, yes, sir," Steve gave a mock salute like Tony was always doing to him, earning himself a grin in the process.

"That's the spirit, soldier boy." Tony shot him another look as Steve hauled himself out of the pool, and if Steve wasn't mistaken, Tony's eyes trailed a fair bit lower than his face. Steve grinned.

He wasn't a prude. He just had a little common decency, that's all.


End file.
